


Contingency Plans

by Paper0wl



Series: Rod and Shield [15]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s01e14 T.A.H.I.T.I., Gen, Identity Issues, Witchcraft, secrets and lies, supernatural medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:09:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4283190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paper0wl/pseuds/Paper0wl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye's been shot. The only person who can save her is the one who saved Coulson. Unfortunately, she's pretending to be someone else, Fury's keeping more secrets than usual, and there are more spies running around than working for an intelligence agency would suggest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Being one of the highest quality bugs in production, the hidden microphone captured the urgency in the subject's voice. "I need to know what happened to me after New York."

 The second voice was on the other side of a cell-phone and the quality was even less clear than normal, although it was definitively female and sounded vaguely confused. "Last I heard, the Director uber-classified the whole affair. Like, higher than ninja-classified."

 "Skye's been shot."

 There was a pause before the second voice replied, cautiously, "You know that's probably a trap, right?"

 "I don't  _care!_ "

 Another, longer pause, probably because the subject wasn't known to lose his calm, even in the face of extreme torture. "I'll see what I can do."

 "Hurry."

 The phone call ended.

 Melinda May, agent of SHIELD, secretly spying on Phil Coulson by order of Director Fury, was enough of a senior agent to know that she was confused.

 ***

 The team was concerned. Skye was probably dying and Coulson had ordered them to Bethesda, to find that the doctors who treated Coulson were nowhere to be found and the doctors who were there couldn't do a thing for Skye. Agent Coulson was aberrantly nervous, pacing the length of the main room of the Bus.

 FitzSimmons jumped when Coulson's phone buzzed. He glanced down at the text message, then promptly pocketed the phone and lowered the ramp.

 "What took you so long?" he demanded as a helmeted woman in a SHIELD field uniform with a bag slung over one shoulder wheeled a sleek motorcycle onto the plane.

 "I was in Iowa when I got the call," she replied dryly, parking her bike next to Coulson's red convertible. She pulled off her helmet and hung it on the handlebars. Coulson looked at her and frowned. “I came as fast as I could. It’s a good thing this thing is radar-proof, because I broke just about every speed limit I passed.”

 His frown deepened. "I hope you plan on securing that.”

 "I'm not going to let my bike harm Lola," the black-haired woman retorted, not quite rolling her eyes. "But as I haven’t mastered teleportation yet and was told this was an emergency, this was the quickest way to travel."

 "It is an emergency," Coulson agreed.

 “So I heard. There’s a lot of those going around,” she continued wryly.

 "Who's this?" Fitz said suspiciously, clutching his tablet.

 "Dawn Morrow," the woman introduced herself.

 A minute frown flitted across Coulson's face, clearing up only to return once more before promptly suppressed. It was an unusual expression for the famously bland agent. Neither of the two scientists noticed. Ward might have, and May certainly would, but thankfully, neither was present in the room, more focused on the appearance of Agents Garrett and Triplett and the interrogation of Ian Quinn. Coulson likely would be involved in that as well, had he not been waiting for something, presumably this woman, to arrive.

 "Dawn Morrow?" Simmons repeated, perking up for the first time in hours. "You're one of the doctors that treated Coulson! I was beginning to worry you didn't exist. Dr. Streiten has gone off the grid and it doesn't look like Coulson was ever treated here in Bethesda. The room, the doctors – everything about the operation – not of it seems to actually exist."

 "I exist," Morrow replied. Then she tilted her head into a conciliatory nod. "But you're right – Phil was never in Maryland. Not for post-New York heart repair anyway."

 "Then why do the files say he was?" the bio-chem genius asked in confusion.

 "Director Fury is a paranoid bastard whose secrets have secrets. In more modern parlance, he’s a lying liar who lies," Morrow declared. " _I_  didn't know most of what happened to Agent Coulson before today."

 "But you treated him," Simmons protested.

 "Fury. Paranoid. Generally with good reason. The Director is of the opinion that Quinn shot your Skye in order to find out what happened to Phil. I happen to agree."

 "And that means he’s going to let her die?!" Fitz exclaimed in outrage.

 "Did I say that?" Morrow asked, raising her eyebrows. "I don't recall saying anything of the sort."

 "He told you what happened," Coulson said slowly. The very audible subtext practically screamed, _"But he didn't tell me."_

 "Even from Asgard, Orion's got a lot of pull with Director Fury," Morrow said with a shrug. "You called her, she called him, he called me, and I'm here to help. Don't broadcast it around, will ya?"

 "You can help?" Simmons said, voice heavily laden with hope.

 "I can get her stabilized. Anything more requires a field trip."

 "I'll take you to her room," Coulson announced, making for the hallway.

 "Lead on, MacDuff."

 ***

 Phil locked the door behind her.

 The woman he both knew and didn’t know raised an eyebrow. "That's one way to do it, I suppose."

 “I don’t recognize you,” he said more mildly than he felt. Skye was near death and the only solution he knew was Kyria, who had agreed to help. But although intellectually he knew Dawn Morrow was just a new alias for Kyria Lux, this woman who claimed to be Dawn Morrow did not look at all like Kyria Lux. Perhaps a little. Maybe.

 Looking for similarities he could _almost_ see made for an interesting headache.

 Morrow gave a small smirk and rolled her shoulders. Twisting ribbons of lightning curled down her arms to dissipate at her fingers as a feeling akin to static electricity rolled across Phil's skin. He gave her a questioning look.

 "Preventing eavesdroppers," she answered with a careless shrug. "You can never be too careful."

 “Why don’t I recognize you?” he asked flatly.

 “Dawn’s a girl who never existed before.”

 “The only key I care about right now is the one that will help me save Skye.” Phil very determinedly did _not_ raise his voice.

 She sighed tiredly. “Dawn Morrow is Kyria Lux.”

 “I _know_ that. What I asked was – okay,” he stopped abruptly, blinking at her. “I did not expect that.” Where before he saw nothing of Lux in Morrow, now the resemblance was obvious, so much so he could not see how he missed seeing Kyria in the agent before him. Her hair was shorter, her posture more confident, her eyes more calculating perhaps, but it was undeniably the same woman. “What was that?”

 Kyria/Dawn grinned. “Charlie calls it my Facial Fidelius Charm – although she’s missing the wand, Bela’s into witchcraft these days.”

 Phil raised an eyebrow. “I was under the impression that witches were bad."

 "Generally, yes,” she agreed. “They get power by negotiating with demons. But I'm top of the Hell hierarchy. So, presto change-o, one soul-sold witch."

 "Remind me never to get on her bad side." Kyria's personal assistant – she didn’t like being called a secretary – had a sharp wit, an acidic tongue, and a talent for avoiding detection. Adding witchcraft into the mix could only make her worse. "She's back to going by Bela?"

 "She's not the type to be a Beth. We left it in her name for a reason you know."

 True. On the official documentation, the agent in question was listed as Elizabeth Isabelle Williams. And yes, Beth did seem a bit of a tame moniker for the former con-artist, but she changed personas almost as easily as Natasha, so it could have worked. She retained too much of the same line of work for it to be a clean break, however. Still, he had accounted for that, and unlike Stark, Bela didn't go out of her way to ruin other people's work.

 "Bela did seem to be a good fit for her."

 "Charlie has a few things to say about Bella _trix_ , but, yes. Hence why she's back to it. That girl changes names faster than me."

 " _Dawn."_

 She shrugged. "People tend to notice if a girl doesn’t change in a hundred years. So w – I changed names and moved on. Anyway, a dash of witchery and no one who doesn't know  _will_  know that Lux and Morrow have anything in common apart from you and SHIELD. So May, and anyone with a memory for faces or hacked files, won't recognize Morrow as Lux."

 Such attention to detail like that was part of what made Phil such an effective agent. It was good to see someone paid attention. But, "What exactly was wrong with Kyria Lux coming to help a friend?"

 "Most of SHIELD knows Kyria Lux is part of the Avengers Initiative," the many-named woman retorted. "It's hardly incognito. Your operation was above NINJAT-classified, except you’re a little too well known to be disappeared that completely. Someone’s looking for the details, so we can’t leave any inconsistencies for them to find. Seeing how, officially, she had nothing to do with your survival, it would look a bit odd if she showed up from Asgard to help. So you get Dawn instead.”

 Like any office, SHIELD leaked gossip like a sieve, even on a few classified matters. That everything classified about Lux and her ninjas _stayed_ classified was nothing short of a miracle. It probably helped that exceedingly few non-ninja agents knew anything about it. Not even Hill knew everything. So, no, Lux really shouldn’t drop in from “Asgard” just for Phil’s post-New York recovery mystery.

 Still.

 "One of the doctors who worked on the miraculously not dead face of New York is ‘taking a step back’?" he asked pointedly.

 "Compared to one of the Avengers, yeah, it is," the recently christened Dawn retorted.

 That was a fair point. If he wasn’t so wound up he might have realized that. Deep breaths. “What sort of emergency were you dealing with in Iowa?”

 She grimaced. “Not a pretty one. You have no idea how relieved I am that neither SHIELD nor SI had any business with Niveus Pharmaceuticals. Stark would overreact and SHIELD would poke. More so than usual.”

 “Why?” he asked mildly.

 “Because the company just imploded and there’s going to be an investigation, if it hasn’t already begun since I left, and I had to get Adeline to hold the fort until Lily recovers, because she was closest and all my preferred ninjas are occupied.”

 “Adeline?”

 Dawn sighed. “Harper. The original SHIELD Amazon.”

 Ah. He didn’t follow the ninja activities all that closely, but the Winchesters stumbling sideways onto an infiltration in the ranks of SHIELD was notable. “I know Gallagher is busy with Ford, but Talley - ?”

 “Wrapping up the loose ends of a black-eye death in Kansas that cut into your little errand in Illinois.”

  _Illinois?_  He blamed Quinn for drawing a blank on that one. Unless – "The Archaeologist?" It was a truly terrible codename, and at the time he had idly wondered if Clint's brother had ever been teased about the purple dinosaur. "How'd it go?"

 "Up until our very abrupt departure, it went well,” she said, sounding less tired than she had a moment earlier. “He won't be a problem, and a possible reconciliation is definitely in the cards. Not so surprising, though – you're usually a very good judge of character," Dawn added with sideways smile, settling on the side of Skye's bed.

 "You can help her?" Phil asked, the question coming up more of a plea than he had intended.

 Dawn didn't even blink at the abrupt change in direction. "Like I said downstairs, I can only stabilize. Apparently, my lightning forms don't support healing."

 "Then stabilize her! What are you waiting for?"

 "I'm not completely comfortable giving one of my limited number of blades to someone who isn't cleared to know about the ninjas. Especially in the midst of a great big conspiracy trying to discover how you survived," she said sharply. "In case you forgot why she was shot in the first place. Trap, remember?"

 "I am unable to forget," he replied, trying to unclench his jaw. "Will you help her or not?"

 "I will," she answered, pulling a feather out of her sleeve. It was black with a bluish tint as it caught the light and was easily as long as her forearm.

 "Is that –?”

 "Yes."

 "What's in the bag then?"

 "Rat traps and medical equipment I don't need."

 "You think there's a rat on my team?" He was very proprietary about his team and he didn't like to think one of them might be a traitor.

 "Not necessarily, but they're no doubt curious about what you went through. Not to mention, who I am, what I can do, and how much I know. The success of any undercover op requires staying in character no matter what."

 "You never went on undercover ops," he pointed out.

 Her grin was lopsided. "My  _life_  is undercover, Phil."

 "Not officially."

 She snorted. "Oh the joys of cover-up paperwork." Taking a deep breath, Dawn drew herself up into a very stiff, very formal posture. With a matching voice, she looked him right in the eyes and asked, "Do you, as the nearest figure of requisite authority over this girl, give consent that I may mark her with a feather I plucked from my own wings?"

 "I never enter into a contract without reading the fine print," he replied, every inch Agent Aplomb. There was no camera for the Tech Twins to add this moment to their collection, which he blamed Nick for his inability to get rid of. Also, Kyria and her secret computer network. He rather suspected Skye was the only reason the Twins hadn’t hacked into the Bus to taunt him with their videos yet. "What will happen to her as a result of receiving that feather?"

 The corners of her mouth turned up. "Smart man," she murmured quietly before resuming her formal voice. "She will have the very same benefits you experience, but without the physical manifestation of my favor. In the technical hierarchy of those bestowed with my favor, she will come beneath those who carry a sword from my collection."

 "Didn't you give Tobias Ford one of those swords?"

 She shrugged her stiff posture away. "Special case. He wasn't in a position to consent, plus the sword was quicker. He's currently in Andy's custody."

 "How's he doing?"

 She gave half a grimace. "He saw things living humans are not meant to see. As a result, his mind took a beating. If the case wasn't classified, Andy would probably use it for his doctorate."

 "He's going for a doctorate? Already?" Phil had to admit he was impressed. "That's a far cry from the stoner you brought in."

 "It's all about having the right motivation."

 "True," he agreed. Finding the right motivation was why agents under his supervision tended to excel. "But back to Skye." And her formal manner returned instantly. "Will the same thing that happened to me happen to her? The – the uncertainty? The broken memories?"

 She frowned. "Those weren't my doing but a result of the clandestine methodology employed by Director Fury. You were the first successful test."

 Through iron force of will, he quelled his initial inclination to gape and exclaim. "And he did it anyway? What was he thinking?"

 "That your body was not healing and it had begun trying to reject the ball of lightning keeping your heart whole and pumping," she retorted sharply. "That you're an honorary Avenger and there was no way we were going to let you die."

 Phil flinched back, blinking at the vehemence in her voice.

 "I would have preferred being informed and having an opportunity to observe the ill effects and possibly ameliorate them," she continued, "but having never done anything of the sort before, I don't actually think I would have been of much assistance. I can still find your heartbeat, however, so if any other side effects materialize, I might be able to at least minimize the problem."

 "And you'll be able to do the same for Skye?"

 "Yes," she said with utmost confidence.

 "Then do it."

 "Help me turn her over."

 Shaking off his shock at her sudden speed, Phil assisted "Dawn" in partly rolling the girl onto her right side without pulling off any of the various sensors, lines, or tubing. Pulling the hospital gown off her shoulder, Dawn stabbed the quill of the feather into the skin of Skye's back. A handful of blue-white sparks burst out.

 "Please tell me that's supposed to happen," Phil said, not quite blandly, but far more calmly than he felt was quite appropriate for the moment.

 "Just give it a minute."

 Nothing happened.

 "Dawn . . ."

 " _Phil_ ,” she countered sharply. “I’ve spent far too much time this week juggling emergencies and injuries. Give it a minute.”

 Before Phil could lose his rapidly diminishing cool and snap that he didn’t care about demon casualties or pharmaceutical conspiracies when a member of _his team_ was _dying_ and his agent-friend was supposed to be _helping_ , the feather dissolved into a wisp of blue-white threaded shimmering black smoke that appeared to be pulled into Skye. The skin near where Dawn had jabbed in the feather rippled and darkened.

 Phil blinked at the two-inch feather seemingly tattooed above Skye's shoulder blade.

 "She is the first in several millennia to be marked by a freely given feather of angelic origin," Dawn remarked, fixing the unconscious girl's collar. "And the first known to have experienced such with the feather of a nephilim."

 Phil tucked his charge back into her hospital bed. The monitors she was hooked up already registered a minute improvement and he breathed out as close to a sigh of relief as his professionalism allowed. "Thank you."

 "I have to tell you, Phil, I'm of the wrong line to be a shepherd."

 Non-sequiturs did nothing to faze him. It helped that Orion's seemingly out-of-left-field comments usually weren't as unrelated as they appeared on first blush. Not that Dawn was Orion. Officially. "It could be argued otherwise. He was the son of your grandfather, if memory serves."

 "Pretty sure my father was cut from the team," she replied, giving him a sideways glance.

 "You do always take care to put out you are not him," he reminded her.

 "And I could be talking to a wall for all my family cares," Dawn retorted.

 "Gabriel's recurring appearances suggest otherwise. As does Raphael's continued absence." Phil was familiar enough with the mannerisms of Dawn's “predecessor” to interpret her silence as a lack of disagreement. "And . . . shepherd?"

 Dawn grinned away the tension brought on by mention of her family. "Yeah, I've got something of a flock going. Bela, you, Jane, Ford, and now Skye."

 Him, Skye, and Ford, yes. Bela, obviously. But, "Jane? What exactly happened with Asgard – and Orion?" he added.

 "Oh, you know, removing a malevolent red counterpart to the Tesseract from its stranglehold within Jane and shoring up the weak points with a little lightning apparently creates a faint tie. Nothing like you or Bela, but still noticeable. Orion was named Ambassador of Midgard, with a good deal of subtext about being the place-holding ruler for the puny mortals. Nothing major. Just another day at the office."

 "Huh. I missed that report," he replied.

 She nodded knowingly. "And this is why you were dubbed Agent Aplomb."

 He raised an eyebrow. "This is all in character for Agent Morrow?"

 Her answering grin was predatory. "Where Kyria Lux is Orion, Dawn Morrow is Morningstar."

 

***


	2. Chapter 2

"The Director just gave you this information?" Melinda asked skeptically as she input the coordinates Morrow provided. She had good reason to be skeptical. Fury had gone to extreme lengths to keep what had happened to Agent Coulson secret. FitzSimmons had combed through files full of lies without much success. May had been given orders to prevent Coulson from learning the truth, and to monitor him if it came out.

 And now this agent came waltzing in claiming Fury had given her all the answers?

 In her experience, things that seemed too convenient generally had more to them than met the eye.

 "Coulson called Orion for help. It's been around the water cooler for years that she has a lot of pull with the director," Morrow replied without much concern.

 So Orion was the woman at the other end of that call? That made sense, she supposed. Orion had been one of Coulson’s agents before New York. "I though Orion was on Asgard," Melinda pointed out.

 The other agent shrugged carelessly. "Apparently one of the upsides to being a not-so-human electricity generator is Doctor Who-ing your phone."

 "'Doctor Who-ing'?" she repeated, not entirely sure she caught the meaning of that reference. "You mean her phone works on other planets."

 Another shrug. "Apparently."

 "Even if I were to believe Orion had the ability to convince Director Fury to release secure files, why would he turn that information over to you and not Agent Coulson? It was his procedure after all," Melinda said bluntly, letting her suspicious nature show through.

 Surprisingly, the side of Morrow's mouth quirked up. "Why did he pass the information on to me without letting you know, you mean? Yes, he mentioned you were on duty watching Coulson."

 Melinda did not let her reactions show. Just because the other woman was well informed did not mean she was properly authorized. She said as much.

 Morrow gave another quirky smile that didn’t reach her eyes and recited clearance phrases that she only could have gotten from the Director. "Now do you believe I'm legit?"

 "Possibly," Melinda temporized resolving to keep a close eye on this guest for as long as she was on board. There was something ever so slightly  _off_  about Morrow. Also something that was familiar, but she couldn't put her finger on what. Melinda did not like loose ends. Especially loose ends with far more information than was good for them.

 ***

 The Guest House, home to project TAHITI and all affiliated materials, was not a SHIELD base. Morrow wasn't entirely clear on who had possession of the base and speculated that it might not be on the books, and therefore was solely accessible to the Director. "It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened," she added cryptically.

 The team going after the GH-325 suited up to enter a possibly hostile base, even though Morrow had the counter-code for entry. She pulled Coulson aside.

 "I know you want answers – and I can guarantee you will find them – but you might not like what you find," she said in warning.

 "I thought I was an Avenger," Coulson retorted. "Even if I wasn't, I have an obligation to my agent to not let her die just because I might not 'like' what I find."

 "Ready?" May asked approaching with a certain degree of marked hesitance, not letting on she had overheard the entire exchange.

 "Yes," Coulson replied, pulling away from Morrow.

 "You're not coming?" May asked the other woman.

 Morrow shook her head. "I'm a doctor. My place is with my patient."

 May made a movement that appeared to be the love-child of a nod and a shrug and let the still suspiciously convenient agent go in peace.

 ***

 "How was the drive from Istanbul?"

 Coulson cleared his throat. "A thunderstorm caught us passing through Sarajevo, but Bluebeard lent us a rain sail," he replied somewhat stiffly. For all the pirate jokes spoken in hushed whispers, he never would have expected Fury to assign himself a pirate-related code. And people said the director had no sense of humor.

 "Lent? Any good businessman worth his salt would have sold it to you," came the response.

 "Good businessmen listen to their wives," Coulson said calmly.

 No response.

 The group of agents looked from Coulson to the door and back as Coulson just stared straight ahead.

 The door unlocked with a loud clank.

 "I’ll give Morrow this much – she’s got good intel,” Garrett said with a relieved smile, as Ward checked that the door was clear.

 "Wives?" May asked with a raised eyebrow.

 Coulson shook his head. "Something Nick used to say when we were in the Rangers."

 One of the two guards in the Guest House recognized Phil, but neither knew about what was stored in the walls. Morrow's code was as good as she'd promised and granted the group full reign over the facility. For a limited time, at any rate. But it was more than enough time to find the room Morrow had told Coulson about, marked for radiation. "Minute levels only," she had explained at Fitz's looks of worry. "It's mostly to deter snoopers. If you were going to camp out for a days, never leaving the lab, then maybe it might be a concern."

 Following Morrow's instructions, Coulson had no trouble finding the medicine cabinet where GH-325 was stored with yet another radiation warning. The doctor-agent had not mentioned that part.

 Ward and Fitz ran the drug back to the Bus. Morrow took the vial with a frown and the agents watched with baited breath as she injected it into Skye. The monitors, beeping a low, but stable rhythm, began climbing into a more healthy range before almost immediately throwing out all sorts of alarms.

 "What's wrong?" Simmons demanded in a near panic. "I thought that was supposed to save her," Fitz added, voice heavily laden with suspicion and concern.

 Morrow just held up a hand in silence to wait as she stared at Skye in careful study. After a few moments, the monitors stabilized again and when they stayed that way, the gathered agents relaxed, letting out a collective sigh of relief. Fitz mumbled an embarrassed apology that Morrow waved away.

 May put the Bus in the air almost as soon as Garrett and Coulson returned. Coulson looked in on Skye briefly, before grabbing Morrow's arm and all but dragging her into his office.

 "You knew," he said flatly.

 "I know a lot of things," she replied just as flatly. "What in particular?"

 "There was an alien corpse down there. The GH drugs came from that."

 "I knew," Morrow agreed. "I found out when Fury debriefed me after she was shot."

 "You knowingly injected Skye with a drug of alien origin," he accused.

 "The feather and the sword are of alien origin, too," she shot back. "I don't recall you having a problem with those."

 "I had  _nightmares_  about that room."

 "And I had no part in that," she reminded him. "Fury cut me out long before that happened. I wasn't involved. I knew nothing more up until a few days ago. I'm sorry," she added.

 "Why didn't he call you in?"

 Morrow shrugged helplessly. "I really don't know. He didn't tell me that. I asked. But he barely gave me what little he did. He wants the Guest House and everything about it to remain a secret."

 There was a knock at the door.

 "Come in," Phil called out.

 May stuck her head in. "There was an explosion at Guest House. It's gone."

 " _What?"_

 "The Director wanted it to remain a secret," Morrow said emotionlessly.

 "There were men in there!" Phil exclaimed.

 "They left," she replied blandly. "The Director isn't heartless, for all that he has been known to employ . . . questionable methods when he feels the occasion calls for it."

 "And the 'occasion' called for you to blow up that facility?"

 "Not me personally, but yes, the Director chose to destroy the facility rather than let this leak lead your so-called psychic to get his hands on the research stored within. A man could do a lot of damage with something like that."

 With an unfathomable expression, May gave Morrow a thorough stare. "Thank you for saving Skye's life," she said before turning and closing the door behind her.

 "I hadn't expected you to be such a cold-hearted bitch," Phil remarked as soon as the sound of retreating footsteps faded away.

 "I tried to model my personality on you and Fury," she retorted flatly, a cold glint in her eyes. "Five days ago my agent almost died. Anyone else and she _would_ have died. As it was, the doctors didn’t know if she’d pull through or not. I left her to complete the mission. Thousands of lives were saved. Then I left her again to come here.”

 Phil didn’t know what to say. He just stared at her. It wasn't that he disagreed with her actions. It was just – disorienting. Although Kyria Lux was officially the alien of the two, she was more – _human_ – than Dawn Morrow. He looked at her and saw Kyria, but she was making a concerted effort not to _be_ Kyria and it showed.

“Besides,” she added, challenge in both her voice and the square of her shoulders, “at its deepest point, Hell burns cold."

 And that was part of the problem right there. It was almost worse than pulling teeth to get Kyria to admit any sort of connection to her father. He knew she had become more comfortable about her heritage after New York, but he hadn’t really seen her in that time. Instead he just faced Dawn, trying to be as different from Kyria as she could so that no one would realize the two were the same.

 She succeeded.

 "I consider Agent Lux to be a close friend," he said finally. "I don't believe I can say the same thing about you."

 Dawn Morrow merely shrugged. "Lux was a member of your team – albeit unofficially – for years before the Avengers Initiative was activated. I, on the other hand, was involved in what was probably the worst period of your life. I wouldn't expect anything less."

 Phil breathed around the tightness in his chest. "So what happens now?"

 "Now?" she repeated. "Agents Garrett and Triplett take Quinn away to a deep, dark cell for shooting Skye, you and your team recover and keep doing your thing, and I go back to hunting down Horsemen while cleaning up ninja messes and trying to figure out what Akasha’s planning next.

 "That's it?" He didn't know why he felt there should be more to it than that.

 "It's called life, Coulson. This is ours. It goes on, regardless of what shit gets thrown at us today."

 "And what I saw in the Guest House?"

 "Go sit with your agent, Coulson, and try to remember that what you saw is the reason she's still alive," Morrow told him somberly. "As for me, I have to go let May know she doesn't need to drop me back in Maryland. Quite frankly, if I have a choice, I have things I left unfinished in Iowa. But you know, have bike, will travel. She can pretty much put me down anywhere in the lower forty-eight."

***


End file.
